A friend who has been running a business for many years said: stop applying for things. Either you’re building or you’re not. I applied for an accelerator recently. And a grant.
And I thought about how strange it is that we hand other people authority over our lives and then act surprised when they use it. We wait for feedback from people we will never meet.
Real business is simple and terrifying. Show up, say what you charge, do the work, get paid. Everything else is a rehearsal.
At least now I’m applying for things knowing I’m using them as help to do the hard thing. I need help and I am happy to accept it. I want to do something with this in my work – why we give up agency so easily and what it costs. And why it feels like the primary choice for most of us.
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